


king (noun)

by Fickle_Obsessions



Series: Sweet Baby, I Need Fresh Blood [1]
Category: 18th Century CE RPF, American Revolution RPF, Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood, Child Death, F/M, M/M, Murder, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-08-11 21:45:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7908703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fickle_Obsessions/pseuds/Fickle_Obsessions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Washington and his first hundred years of killing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	king (noun)

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first in a set of two stories that will explain why Washington is the way he is at different points in the of the Sweet Baby, I Need Fresh Blood series. Lots of shabby history, and lots of the wrong twinks in this one. And please mind the warning about violence and child death. Washington doesn't get through a hundred years without some pretty big hits.
> 
> Also apologies to the Farifax family, I'm sure they would very much like to be excluded from this narrative. And many thanks to [iniquiticity](http://archiveofourown.org/users/iniquiticity/pseuds/iniquiticity:) for the beta.

The first man to die by Washington’s hand does so well before Washington becomes what he will eventually become. This first kill happens when he is just fifteen years old, a murder at the order of the king. 

Washington is harvested by the king from English farm country in 1415, along with many other men and boys. He is given a sword and leather doublet and is herded onto a ship bound for France. He learns at the same time what it is to be seasick and how it feels to be pressed up against a man he barely knows. The first night they lie down to sleep, packed in rows so tightly that the only way to cross from one side of the ship to the other is by stepping carefully between the thighs of grouchy, exhausted men.

Nervous, uncomfortable but trying to stay still, Washington only ends up more restless. He fidgets helplessly until the back of his neck is grabbed and shaken by a man who growls, “Quit your moving, boy.” 

Washington does as he is ordered, locks up tight, but the man doesn’t move his hand. He holds Washington still the whole night, either oblivious of or unconcerned with the hardness against his thigh that Washington can't seem to will away. The next morning the man rolls over with barely a glance over his shoulder when the cook rings his bell. 

It’s not much later that Washington brings his sword down hard upon the tender juncture between the neck and shoulder of a young man not much older than he is. Young and clearly inexperienced, Washington has been left at the back of the line and his orders are just to “make the battlefield tidy.” The young man, clearly just as unseasoned as Washington, had been defending his master and master’s fallen horse. He’s exhausted, halfway to collapsing. If he’d run away he wouldn’t have had to die. 

Still Washington doesn’t feel any pity. He’d seen the young man slashing at the backs of Englishmen giving pursuit to the French forces, seen the boy raise his broken spear when he finally spotted Washington coming. Washington only notes that the boy has a strange sort of loveliness. He has a nose too big for his face, and hair that was shorn somewhat messily, as if done in haste, but there's still something appealing about his large blue eyes, his soft looking cheeks, pink with exertion. He dies crying and coughing up blood onto his lips and chin.

Washington steps around the carcass of the horse and finds the French knight on the ground, pierced by almost as many arrows as his horse. He is still alive, struggling to breathe and covered in mud. Lying completely prone, his only defenses are the pitiful posture and a few words of whispered French. Washington makes the battlefield a bit tidier, and moves on.

In the end they are victorious, and in as thorough and violent a fashion as any battle could possibly be. Thousands are dead, almost all of them French. Washington’s king will now rule even more country, more subjects. He tells his army, voice breaking, how very much he loves them for it. Washington himself is master of nothing more than he was yesterday, but even so he is moved by his king’s gratitude. The cheers that go up afterward, loud and raucous, lift Washington’s thoughts at last away from a muddy field strewn with the dead and return them fully to the living. Were not they all soldiers? Were not they all English? Was Washington not a man now? Having fought, having killed for king and country?

He is content, but exhausted before the wine and ale casks are broken open, but after few cups of each he feels he could sit beside the fire listening to the songs all night. Would have, except that a young man catches him as he goes to refill his cup. He pulls Washington into the shadows, begs him to rub their cocks together, and Washington obliges him while panting against his jaw. 

It sets a preference. Washington keeps fighting, does so for seven years more, moving between France and England at the beck and call of his king. He gets used to the sound of a sword cutting through muscle and tendon. He celebrates victory and defeat in the same way, with another young man, the two of them stifling their moans in the dark away from the rest of camp. Only rarely is it the same boy twice; they die too often or leave. Even so it feels like this will be the finest time of Washington’s life. 

Washington’s king dies far too young, and though there are still battles to fight he can’t help but take it as a sign. He could love that king after that first monumental victory, trust him to remember always that he must be grateful for his soldiers. The king’s brother seems to Washington to be just a man, not so very different from any other. He squabbles with his surviving brother for power, and acts far too proud for a man who will one day have to yield his throne when the king’s infant son comes of age. It makes killing for him feel different. For the first time, Washington begins to see the pettiness of their cause, land and money and lives changing hands, and then back again. 

He goes home and tries to pretend it is just the same as he left it. Perhaps it is, but Washington no longer fits. Too tall for the little houses, too well traveled to not realize that the hamlet is laughably small and uninteresting. The same worn paths are there leading to all the same places, ready to take Washington back to the same fate passed down through each generation of his family. He takes over his mother’s farm, he marries, and he waits to find what it’s like to create life instead of end it. 

In terms of farming all Washington finds is frustration. His enemies are now numerous and undefeated: weather, animals, bugs, and rot. He fights them with months of back breaking labor in a battle that always results in a stalemate. Enough food for everybody to live -- Washington, his family, the bugs, the animals -- but none of them prosper. 

As far as the life that a marriage can create, he never finds out. Martha is a sweet woman, plump and petite, good hearted. She has two children from a dead husband, an indolent boy that hates Washington, and a sickly girl that loves him. Martha longs for more and draws Washington to her often, but for years they await his own sons and daughters that never come. 

Two decades pass like that. Every year comes a harvest but never one that makes the effort seem worth it. Every day the boy grows more resentful, and the girl more ill. Early on Washington tries to right the boy, but Martha cannot stand to hear him yell. He stays silent, and the boy stays sullen. He puts his energy instead to doting on the daughter. He lets her keep a litter of kittens, carries her to church when she is too weak to walk. She dies during a bitter winter, breaking Martha's heart. Death, his work unfinished, lingers in the house. He makes the nights darker, the quiet in the room heavier. Martha dies by inches of a fever until finally, incongruously, she breathes her last when the new grass is starting to push up through the melting snow. 

The boy runs away and Washington does not blame him. He does not think about marrying again. 

Though it’s spring after Martha dies, the world loses its color day by day. Washington endures another three years of harvests, getting even less for the work because he now must pay for help. Every other season brings him news of another death in his family. Washington’s eldest brother first in the following winter, then his sister in the summer. A few months later his young brother goes, too. His mother, a widow since Washington’s childhood, is the last go, bent and bitter. That Washington survives her seems hardly any comfort at all as she lies there, fading. 

Washington spends his forty-fifth year waiting for Death to come now to him, and because Death comes in the form of a handsome young man, shorter than Washington and much more slight, Washington ends up propositioning him. 

They find each other in the tavern and a warm summer night. Washington goes to the tavern not because he particularly likes to hear people talk and most certainly not because he wishes to talk himself. He does not love the noise, the constantly repeated refrains of old grudges, but it’s better than the maddening silence that fills his house after nightfall. Each night he goes and sees the same faces and hears the same arguments as he methodically gets drunk enough that when he pushes open the door to his home later he will think only of sleep.

So Washington takes an interest in the stranger when he walks in simply because he is a stranger. He doesn’t see enough of them, but he certainly doesn’t see enough that look like this one, pale skin, black hair and blue eyes, with lips just as pale as the rest of him, but supple, generous. He's got a slim frame, too; Washington could circle his hand around the young man’s wrist with plenty to spare. Spreading his hands open with thumb touching thumb, he could curl his fingertips around the man's sides. Looking at him, Washington can’t help be reminded of others he had years ago, during his time as a soldier. It awakens an old hunger.

Though Washington doesn't yet recognize the shape he's taken, he doesn’t doubt that Death is coming for him. He finds he badly wants a chance at that old way of celebrating a life passing: enjoying the sound a young man’s quick breath in his ear, the strength of his grip. He should be intimidated by how finely the man is dressed, is, in fact. His clothes are not new, not immaculate, but they’re better than Washington has ever had. Washington knows his place in the world, knows the width of the divide between himself and his betters, but he's suddenly hungry. Starving. It's worth the gamble, worth the potential humiliation, to sate his appetite a final time. 

Washington speaks to the man, leans in and points out the obvious: he is too fine to be in a place like this. 

Wonderfully, he gets a smile. “I’m a traveler,” he says, looking up at Washington’s face with interest. 

“From where?” Washington asks, feeling already the prickle of heat on the back of his neck. The young man’s lashes are dark and thick, rimming his eyes like kohl, and his hands are perfectly made.

The young smirks at him, wonders, “What places do you know?” 

Though Washington knows very well how he looks, he resents that he’s been taken for a simple farmer, particularly when his thoughts have been cast back to the war. He straightens his back, and talks of Harfleur, Calais, Agincourt, Burgundy, Bauge and Verneuil, and the port cities he’d been to when he was being shuffled in between England and France at the whim of his king. He talks more about the battles than he ever has since coming home and all because it makes the young man keep leaning towards him, makes him touch Washington’s knee lightly with those splendid fingers.

Washington is putting together a messy plan of attack, thinking of how to get the young man to leave with him, get him anywhere he would consent to be alone with Washington, when the young man stops him with a tap of his finger right in the middle of Washington’s chest. “Stay right here. I will be just a moment.” 

He’s gone more than a moment, gone long enough that Washington assumes that he’s made his flight. He pats his pocket and finds that at very least none of the meager coins in it have been filched. He’s been taken for a fool, flirted with for sport and left to wait endlessly, but not so great a one as to be parted from his money. It’s cold comfort.

Washington drains his cup, means to leave when he slaps it down on the table, but the young man is suddenly there. He appears so silently that Washington startles, and the young man spreads his hand over Washington’s to ease him. 

“Shall we?” The young man smiles again when he asks, and there is something changed about him. His pale lips are suddenly red. 

Washington agrees immediately. He expects the young man to be fastidious and choosey about where they find to rut, but he’s not at all. He elects to have Washington while protected from the night by nothing than the cover of a little copse of trees and clothes hastily pushed aside. The young man rides him with a wickedly unashamed glee and for the first time in years, Washington’s body has to work to sustain him. His heart pounds, his breath comes almost too fast, his thighs burn. It keeps up, Washington’s body, for all that he’s been waiting to leave it behind for the bugs, and animals, and rot to have at last. He has vigor enough still to hold the young man’s hips up, drive into him again and again until the young man cries out, shudders. Soon after that Washington is reminded, buried all the way to the hilt, of just how much pleasure one can feel while still on Earth.

The young man does not accept Washington’s invitation to come back with him to his shabby little farmhouse. He does, however, allow Washington to gather him in his arms after they’ve righted their clothes. He accepts Washington’s first kiss easily, takes Washington’s face between his hands and returns the favor twice. 

“What is your name?” Washington asks, trying to keep him from leaving. 

The young man looks at him for a long moment before he answers, “George William Fairfax.” 

Washington laughs, then strokes the hair away from the young man’s cheeks when he looks offended. “I am George as well,” he explains. “But just George Washington. My mother didn’t bother naming me twice.”

The young man smiles, “You must call me William then when you look for me tomorrow night.”

Washington feels a bright spark of something light in his chest; it catches, kindles and grows until it’s giving off a pleasant heat. “I will.” 

Washington spends the next day as if it is the first after a long hibernation. Things that had long since stopped having any sort of impact he suddenly feels acutely, so that he ends up marveling at the warmth of the sun upon his face, the taste of his food, the feeling of his body at work. It might be have been pleasant were the circumstances different, but instead it is unsettling. He’d gotten used to the grey doldrums that made up the end of his life, and he doesn’t relish the transition back when William leaves, if William even does return in the evening. He realizes suddenly that he’d hardly been given any guarantee.

As the sun starts to slip down toward the horizon, Washington slips back and forth between anticipation and dread, convincing himself one moment of the likelihood and another moment of the impossibility that William meant what he said. As soon as he is able he goes to the tavern and finds that William is not there, not yet. He drinks and is only barely distracted from his anticipation when he overhears people saying that Harriet Downing was found dead in a field this morning. 

The news that Death has returned to the village is entirely forgotten when William appears. Washington cannot hide his relief, his gratitude. William buys Washington’s drinks, and rewards him with a velvety laugh every time Washington leans down, reckless, to whisper bawdy talk into his ear. He finally confesses a little bit about himself, too, admits that he has come down in the world lately. He swears rather fiercely he shall not be down here for long. 

“You’re young,” Washington says. “You have plenty of time.” 

William smiles as if Washington has said something quite clever. “That, I suppose, is true.”

Well after midnight William disappears again after telling Washington to meet him in a nearby stable. He waits inside, fingers tapping impatiently against his thigh, for William to appear, lets himself trust this time that he will. William does not betray his trust, he bursts into the barn, giddy and laughing. He bids Washington to have him standing instead of in the hay, Washington’s arms straining to hold the slender boy up as his hips flex. Above him William’s grin is so sharp and white that it gleams in the strips of moonlight filtering through the clapboards and Washington wishes for the first time in years that he had more time. 

After, he holds on for as long as he can to William before he slips away, promising this time that Washington will see him again.

On the third day William comes right at sundown, this time to Washington’s little farm house. He says with his pale lips against Washington’s shoulder that he must go, he can’t stay here any longer. Washington suffers only a brief moment of cold misery before William continues. “Come with me.” 

It’s not a request Washington is expecting. It’s hard even to conceive that it’s not given wistfully, a pleasant thought but not a genuine offer. Washington looks down at William’s face and finds only expectant sincerity. He thinks, ‘no,’ at first but then looks up and regards his house, thinks of what it would be like if he was to suffer another winter alone in it, especially now with all the fresh memories of what he no longer has. He has no heirs, no love of the land, he has no plans for the rest of his life except to make do.

He looks back at William, sees again with fresh eyes all the loveliness of his features, and suddenly it is very easy to say, “I will.”

William beams up at him, then brings Washington’s head down to kiss him. A moment later he asks, with his fingers on Washington’s belt, for him to bring the sword he has not used in ages. 

“There may be highwaymen,” William says, sucking a small mark on Washington’s neck. “But what fools would they be to attack us when they see someone so tall, and strong, and serious with iron at his side.”

Washington takes up the sword, feels how the leather straps of the scabbard have grown brittle with years of poor care. They aren’t so stiff, however, that the sword doesn’t hang as it should. It feels strange, but not wholly unfamiliar to have the weight of it on his belt again. 

Soon he steps outside he finds proof of William's confidence in him in the form of two horses. Washington ties his meager bundle of belongings to the saddle and mounts. Before he spurs his horse, William asks him, “Is there anyone you want to say goodbye to?”

Washington answers, truthfully, “I’ve done it already.”

There is a full moon so bright that the road seems to glow beneath their horses’ hooves, and it allows them to put some miles behind them before they stop. The relief Washington feels at looking back and seeing nothing but the dark shape of hills and the odd bit of lamplight through a far off window is astonishing. He hadn’t realized how heavy the weight of that place was upon his back. They ride north on the road past the village nearest to Washington’s own and straight through. By the time they reach the town at the crossroads, Washington feels as if he has shed not just years, but whole decades. 

The tavern in town is twice the size of the biggest house in Washington’s hamlet, two stories tall with a cellar below, a regular warren of rooms and hallways situated about a large, open main hall. It is filled with more characters and more classes than Washington’s little tavern at home. William has Washington gets them drinks and proceeds to spend the evening in high spirits. He makes Washington admit that it feels good, amazing actually, to have done something so rash. He drinks his ale and smiles when William is taken with sudden flights of poetry, quoting odes and epic tales that Washington has never heard before. 

Very soon William is acting as if he has already come up in the world, starts to speak to others in the tavern a bit imperiously. At first it’s only amusing. Washington enjoys how William looks to him and winks or waggles his brows every time gets a bit more daring with his play-acting. It’s not too long, however, before William condescends to the wrong man who has imbibed just the right amount of spirits. 

Their argument seems to be of the most common type when it starts, and everyone but Washington, trying to intercede and pull William away, ignores it. Then something, a sharp comment or perhaps a brush of the other man’s shoulders against his, offends William enough that he shoves at the man. The man must be unsteady, more drunk than he appears, because he crashes to the floor. At his inelegant fall the rest of the tavern at last takes note and begins jeering. When the man rights himself again his hand goes for the dagger his side, and the tavern goes suddenly quiet, all the noise sucked out along with a collective intake of breath.

At the sight of a dagger flashing near William’s pale skin the last thing left asleep within Washington wakes up. He moves with the kind of grace and confidence that he swore he’d forgotten. In a three, precise steps Washington steps between William and the man and draws his sword. 

For show, one might press the tip of a sword to your opponent’s throat, but to inflict a deadly stroke that will leave him alive long enough to rue their choices, one ought to press it instead against his belly. Washington does the latter. The man holds himself very still; a wound to the intestines all but guarantees a long, foul, and painful death. 

William seems to take a moment just to enjoy looking at the scene, then pulls carefully at Washington’s elbow. “I think we ought to leave.” He doesn’t linger after he’s said it, seems to trust that Washington will follow him when he turns and makes for the door. Washington does not sheathe his sword until he steps out into the night air. 

Outside William is waiting him just a few steps away, he’s smiling. “Come,” he says. “Let’s away.” Yet he doesn’t start toward where the horses are quartered, he walks down the road. Washington follows, taking long strides that quickly bring him to shoulder to shoulder to William. 

Behind them the tavern door opens and shuts. Washington looks back and sees, unsurprisingly, the same man. 

“We are being followed,” he says softly. 

“Yes,” William agrees. He takes Washington’s arm, and turns suddenly from the road, tugging Washington along with him. He moves far faster than Washington has ever seen him do before, so fast that for all his long legs Washington must struggle a little to keep up. 

When William seems satisfied that they are far enough away and out of sight, he turns and reaches up, bringing Washington’s mouth down to his. Though still anxious about the man from the tavern, Washington cups William’s face and tries to put into the kiss the whole of what he’s felt tonight. It’s a soft kiss, full of exceedingly fragile things like hope and joy. William sighs, lets him push his tongue past his lips, lick into his mouth. He senses rather than truly notices how sharply the tip of William’s incisor drags across his tongue when William breaks away. 

He presses his forehead to Washington’s, lifting up on his toes to do it. “I love you,” William says, making it sound so very sweet. Washington can’t speak to say it in return, just keeps their foreheads pressed together and holds William close. “You would have killed for me,” William says, sounding awed. “You really would have.”

It’s not a question, so Washington doesn’t have to answer. His eyes are shut and his breathing easy when William whispers, “But would you let me kill?” 

Washington opens his eyes, blinks them twice thinking he couldn’t have heard William say something so strange. He looks down into William’s face, searching as much as he can in the dim light of night for some clue as he tries to understand the meaning of his question. 

William smiles at him, indulgent. “I love you,” he says again. He kisses the corner of Washington’s mouth gently. “You are better than I think you know, so strong and steady and ready to kill for me already, so soon. I want you. And I can have you forever, my love, but not unless you can accept certain things.” 

Washington can hardly make sense of what William is saying, shaking his head in confusion, but before he can think of a question to ask there comes the sound of soft, regular footfalls upon grass. Washington looks up and see the man from the tavern walking slowly and calmly towards them. He tenses, readies himself to push William behind him and draw his sword again but before he can do any such thing, William slips out from his arms. 

William puts a hand up and the man from the tavern stops. He draws a circle in the air with his finger and the man from the tavern turns slowly in a circle. William looks back to Washington, his eyebrows raised in eagerness for his comment. 

But Washington only shifts uncomfortably, hand on the hilt of sword. William waits, forcing something from him. “I don’t understand,” he’s says finally. 

“I know,” William croons at him as if he hardly expected anything more. “But you will very soon.” He looks back at the man from the tavern, “He’s under my power, my love. He’s mine entirely, and he’ll do us no harm. But we? We shall do him a very great amount of harm.” 

Washington steps back involuntarily. William laughs and shakes his head at him. “All you need do is watch, my love. Stay right there and don’t make a sound.” 

William leaves him and rounds the man from the tavern. Washington cannot help but feel a twinge of fear when he gets within an arm’s reach of him, but the man remains still, his arms hanging down, harmless, at his sides. He just stands there with a straight back, face forward and eyes unseeing. Washington’s gut twists again when William presses his chest to the man’s back. He looks right at Washington when he wraps his arms around the man’s shoulders and nuzzles his face into his neck.

He watches with sick disappointment as William bites the man’s throat. But then William keeps biting, harder than could possibly be pleasurable. Washington stands dumbly watching as William does nothing for an endless moment but hold the man tightly and swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing again and again. At last, William pulls away, with a pleased hum. 

The man’s head lolls; he is limp as a puppet with its strings cut. On the man’s neck Washington can just see marks, deep punctures dribbling out sluggish lines of blood that shine black in the moonlight. William drags a fingers through it and brings his fingers to his mouth. He sighs and finally lets go of the man altogether. 

He falls, and falls in a way Washington finds quite familiar. He has seen a man pierced through the eye with an arrow, seen a man get an ax to his head. The man from the tavern is entirely dead. And he is dead because of William’s bite. 

William looks up at him, no longer smiling, no longer looking so deeply satisfied. He is as vulnerable as Washington has ever seen him. “This is the truth of things, my love. My brave soldier. It isn’t a choice. I must kill, but in return I never grow old, and I never die. Have you heard such stories? You must have.” 

Washington nods mutely. Around the campfires men like to tell stories, like to spin tales of revenants and draugrs, and in France there had been travelers that talked of strigas. Yet in all the descriptions of terrible undead spirits Washington had never once described a creature like William.

He takes a step toward Washington. “I can make you like me, my love. I want to. I’ve been alone so long. Lonely for years.” He sounds as if he hurts when he says it, and Washington can feel a matching piece of that ache in his chest. Years of feeling alone, nothing to do but bide his time as he waited for Death, and now he’s had William, felt pleasure, and anticipation, and hope again. But. 

“You needn’t answer now,” William says, taking another step. He puts his hand out, palm up. “Take your time. I can wait. I’ll show you everything, answer all your questions. But know that if you say yes, we can have centuries together. I can make you even stronger than you are now. I can make you more than you are. You won’t spend an eternity a farmer, I can assure you that. We’ll be lords together. We will be great.” 

Washington considers William’s face. Considers pleasure, and hope, and a long future that won’t be spent alone. He thinks of Death and how there was a time in his life when he felt as if he was Death’s trusted accomplice, and yet lately he’s been nothing more than a dutiful subject, waiting for its beck and call. He takes William’s hand. 

William draws him away from the body, leads him until they are sheltered under the canopy of several tall trees, just as he did that first night when he woke Washington up, brought him to life again. In the shadows, he presses Washington’s hand to the front of his breeches. “The blood allows me this, let’s not waste it.” 

Washington kisses William knowing now what the unusual copper taste on his tongue is, understanding at last why William’s skin is always cool to the touch. He presses his palms flat to William’s skin, kisses him deeply, searching for something like fear or disgust, but William is just as he was before, soft, and slender, and finely made. Sinking into William and hearing his sigh, Washington feels only like he’s broken free from unseen chains. 

They travel on, and every night William kills. As he had when he became a soldier, Washington finds it does not take very much to get used to it. He’s seen much worse than such silent, easy deaths and each one leaves William Washington’s for the night.

While they are traveling Washington plays, rather unnecessarily, the role of a hired bodyguard. William, he learns, is stronger than him and deadlier in every way. However, his presence behind William makes people act differently, makes them see William as more like the lord he truly is. Washington does not mind the fiction, but he likes it best when William whispers to him of how they will, the both of them, be some day dressed in fine silks and velvets, rich and deathless, the envy of society.

A summer unlike any Washington has ever spent in his life ends, and late in the fall he asks to be turned into what William is. He does not want to just survive another winter; he wants not to have to fear it. William obliges him, promises again the centuries of pleasure they will have before he bites hard into Washington’s throat and begins to drain him of his life. It takes three days for Washington to die, each night getting drained again and fed from William’s wrist. When the darkness overcomes him the final time, he assumes that it has failed, that Death did not allow him the victory.

It takes another day for him to rise again. 

He finds all the world made new when he awakes. With new senses Washington sees the world in perfect detail, hears the way it breathes. He learns to satisfy a new hunger. Sleep, exertion, and sex all change in their own ways and if William is not patient with Washington’s wonder at them, Washington tells himself it is only because William has forgotten what it is like, so much time having passed since he changed. While Washington grows stronger he remains in the role of a bodyguard, but he is patient. William is only just now coming up in the world again. 

It’s a pleasure, at first, to see William in finer and finer robes, a pleasure to take them off in increasingly elegant rooms. He feels no jealousy because they share a secret. The nobles that fawn over William’s grace and style are just as likely to die in Washington’s arms as they are William’s. And either way they die their gold and jewelry go into a single pot that William uses to achieve greater and greater status and always Washington follows him to these new heights. 

He waits for more than a decade for something more than just a finer sword, better boot leather. He waits to be introduced as more than William’s hired man. Then he waits to have the courage to say something. 

“My love,” William coos at him immediately after he does. He pulls Washington down until he stoops his shoulders low enough for William to kiss him. “Your powers are not great enough yet. You cannot yet enthrall a victim, cannot yet handle the sun for any useful length of time. In due time, my darling. In due time.”

He says it so sweetly that Washington finds it easy to believe, and he goes on believing until Sally. 

At first, at least to Washington, she is indistinguishable from any likely victim. She is pretty, young, and very rich. Washington waits patiently for her seduction to end, for her life to feed William, and for her money to line their coffers. 

So it comes as quite as a surprise when William, having listened to Sally complain about her mother’s lady’s maid as he kissed her neck, bids Sally to have the maid come and join them in the room. The maid, a young woman already thick around the middle, comes in, curtsies and awaits to hear her orders with a vague air of impatience. William smiles at her, and with the barest push of his power gets the girl under his spell. She stands in the middle of the room and allows William to feed from her until she is dead.

Sally gasps, when she realizes what has happened, and Washington waits to be ordered to kill her, but then Sally laughs. It’s a shocked little giggle, as if William had done nothing more than tell a rude joke, and it’s enough to utterly charm William. Washington watches with distant horror as she begins to beg William to tell her everything. 

“Washington,” William calls, eventually. “Would you please deal with the body?” 

Alone in dark, searching for a rock large enough to place on the maid’s chest to keep her under the surface of a shallow river, Washington accepts that there is no great plan for him. 

Very soon Sally is made as they are, and she is lovely. Her hands are small and unblemished, her neck long and regal. She speaks and sings and laughs exactly as she ought to, and everywhere she and William go they are welcomed as honored guests. William is sometimes a lord, sometimes a wealthy merchant, and once or twice he is a foreign prince. Sally may be William’s wife, his sister, or a fair cousin his family took in as a ward. And as for Washington, he has nothing to do but loom behind them and add an air of danger to their mystery.

From time to time William will still come to him, particularly when he’s fed from rich blood, and has a desire to be taken in rough hands. He will laugh when Washington lets some of his anger show, when he shoves William hard against any available surface. 

“My handsome brute,” he says, enjoying that it makes Washington shove at him even harder. “My shabby, weather-beaten knight.” 

As he did before Washington endures. They travel the length of the island, cross to Ireland and then back. Eventually William chooses his next fatted cow to slaughter, a self-centered, widowed mother of a fifteen year old boy and thirteen year old daughter. She has more years to her than she will admit, and has a dozen different tinctures to keep her cheeks plump and soft. William pretends not to notice the veins on the back of the lady’s hand, and Sally pretends to be his beloved sister, pretends to enjoy the young son’s infatuation with her. Washington tries to pretend that he is not there. 

He subjects himself to long walks in sunlight in an attempt to build his tolerance to it more quickly, and most nights he travels for hours on the road to find likely victims. Afterward he takes the drive that the blood gives him to the taverns instead of back to where William is seducing one woman while reaching secretly for another. 

William may have tired of him, but there are young men still that long to hear about adventure, about ships at sea, battlefields, about the time Washington heard a king speak and call him brother. Some are bold and some are shy, but they all make lovely noises in Washington’s ear and help him forget that he must soon return to a fine house that is wholly empty of anyone he cares to be around. 

Actually, that is not quite fair. There is the girl. It has been so very long since Washington has been around children that in the beginning she seems far too small. She is petite in her own right, but beside Washington she is downright diminutive. Still, she is clever, brighter than her young years. She realizes immediately that when she is told to play music to entertain the adults that only Washington listens while the others play their game of heated glances. 

She speaks to him at first only briefly, and in a voice so soft it barely carries. “Do you have a wife?” she asks. 

He has no reason to answer her questions. Washington makes sure he remembers to smile at least a little when he does. “I did once.” 

She asks him next if he has a daughter, and gets the same answer. 

After that she never runs out of questions, asking if he’s ever been to London, and when he says yes, she assumes he must have been to Paris and Milan and everywhere else she can think to name. One afternoon she wishes to know if he has a horse, and will he take her to see it. As she pets the white blaze down the stallion’s nose she asks more questions, ones he can hardly answer, the horse’s name, what its favorite thing to eat is, whether it really likes to be ridden. She laughs every time he answers, “I don’t know.” 

Still sometime later she asks for a fencing lesson, Washington chuckles at her before he realizes the question is absolutely sincere. With nothing else to do that evening -- William, Sally, and the Lady of the House are guests at a ball to which Washington was not invited -- he obliges her. He gives her a walking stick to use as a sword and in an empty library teaches her the stances as he learned them.

She continually has to pause to push her hair from her face. He sighs, “It’s rather essential, my dear girl, to be able to see your opponent.” 

Washington bids her to stand on a chair, and she makes a delighted face at being told to misbehave. She climbs up on the nearest one and stands just as tall and still as she can while Washington undoes the blue ribbon in her hair, pulls it all back more neatly and ties it off again. 

He teaches her all of the starting stances, the basic strokes, and eventually capitulates to her begging him to show her not with the walking stick, but his sword. She gasps with delight when he pulls it from the scabbard, and watches as he takes a few careful passes with all the innocent excitement of one who has never seen a sword put to its real purpose. 

Soon after Washington rises to find William plying the mother with wine, and Sally sneaking the boy sips from glasses she would never finish on her own. The girl, thankfully, has already been sent to bed, and Washington waits to at last be able to leave this house. It is hours of teasing before William finally takes the mother’s offer of her neck as she flirtatiously tilts her head. He sinks his teeth into her neck swiftly and from the corner the boy lets out a hazy noise of protest. They are both dead moments later, and William and Sally pull the gold happily from their fingers. 

William calls to Washington as he turns to leave. “Are you going to take care of the girl?” 

Washington turns back to him. “She’s a child.” 

“One that knows our names, our faces,” William says slowly as if he fears Washington will not understand him. Sally laughs quietly behind her hand. When Washington hesitates, William continues. “You want to leave her to come across us one day at court? Shriek bloody murder about how we have not changed since the day her mother died? Take care of her.” 

“I will not.” It is the first time he has ever told William no. He lifts his chin, ready. 

But William hardly seems to notice. He rolls his eyes as if only mildly put out, “Then I shall.”

“No,” Washington says, trying again. 

This time it does not glance off of William, leave him unaffected. He looks at Washington with an expression that is perfectly still and quite cold. Washington stares calmly back. He never has much trouble with fear before a fight.

William’s features shift suddenly into a smile. “She dies by your hand or mine.” 

Doubt pierces through Washington’s calm, a pinprick which becomes a gaping hole allowing fear to flood in. He has no idea of the limits of William’s strength, no idea at all of how to kill one of their kind. He realizes awfully that he has no assurances whatsoever that he would come out of a fight the victor, and if he fails he cannot trust that William will make it easy on the girl, especially when he is angry. 

William capitalizes on his hesitation, starts for the door and makes Washington all but chase him down the hall. He catches William outside the girl’s bedchamber, leans his hand heavily against the door. 

“William,” he says, looking down at his sire. “Please.” 

For a moment William looks almost repentant, he lifts his brow as if suddenly struck with his own behavior. He pushes up into Washington’s space, lifts his hands to his cheeks. Sighing softly, he looks directly into Washington’s eyes, and whispers, “If you want this to be painless for her, George, you will obey me.”

Washington rears back as violently as if he’s been slapped. Expression stormy again, William reaches for the door, and Washington makes a desperate attempt to block him. William grabs his shoulder, grip hard enough to hurt. Washington feels his flesh on the edge of tearing and realizes he could not break free of William’s hold if he tried. 

Washington grunts, too loud, and fears waking the girl. Desperate he says, “I will.” His stomach turns over. “I’ll obey.” 

The vicious pressure on his shoulder releases, and William takes a suspicious step back. A moment later he says, impatient, “Go on then.” 

Still Washington takes another moment to collect himself. He pushes the door open by careful degrees and sees the girl’s bed before him, curtain drawn. He moves as silently as possible as he enters. Washington does not yet trust his ability to bewitch, and does not want to rely upon it only to have his control slip. Carefully, slowly he pulls the curtain back, sees her curled up on her side, still perfectly asleep. 

He kneels, and for the first time in his life he feels true horror at the prospect of killing. He hesitates long enough that William begins to move behind him, Washington hears two impatient footsteps upon the carpet, an annoyed hiss. Defeated, he leans down, and he bites. He’s as soft as he can be, but still the skin splits, the blood bursts free. He shuts his eyes and drinks, dreading all the time that he will hear her whimper. Thankfully she never makes a sound, the only intrusion into the silence is Washington’s pained gasp when he is done draining her. 

He wipes his mouth fitfully as if he’s unable to scrub the blood from his lips, grits his teeth against a sob. When he sits back and makes himself look at her, his shoulders sag when he sees that her eyes are open. 

Behind him, William moves. He looks back in time to see William pass through the door and down the hall. Washington is a left alone with a little corpse. 

He spends some time in contemplation of it, and when he emerges it’s with a blue ribbon wrapped around the hilt of his sword. A few hours later Sally and William, having collected all the available treasure, spill wine and oil upon the carpets and the house goes up in flames. Washington does not speak for three days. They travel north and William announces himself in York as a young Lord, draped in gold he is quickly believed.

He finally breaks his silence to ask, “How do our kind die?”

William smirks at him. “Well,” he says, considering it. “The sun is unlikely to kill you quickly anymore. By now it will just burn your skin until it’s black, but leave the core of you alive.” He taps his chin, mocking Washington with his musing. “The best and quickest way to die would be to lose all that precious blood our kind need. You have to be rid of almost all of it, and very fast.” 

William smiles as he draws his finger across his throat. He gives Washington the information so freely, confident that he means to use it upon himself and perfectly unbothered that he will. Washington realizes that he had some last little bit of hope left that he was not entirely worthless to William. It was foolish, and he will not be made a fool of again. 

William turns away, dismissing Washington to whatever fate he chooses. He does not guess, perhaps does not remember, that Washington was a killer long before he met William. Washington knows that there is a vein, a fat artery, in the leg that will drain the body of blood just as quick as the one in the neck. It has the added benefit of allowing you to come upon your victim unawares. 

After three days of stoking, Washington’s anger is a forge hot enough to produce a resolve hard as iron, steel. He doesn’t hesitate. As fast as he can possibly manage Washington slices through the back of both William’s legs. His sharper senses allow him to hear the sound of the sword cutting through skin and muscle perfectly. He smells the blood before it hits the ground. 

William shouts and falls to ground, tendons cut along with the veins. He is on the ground, looking up at Washington with naked surprise, when he cuts through his neck. Washington spends less time with William’s body than he did with that of the girl’s. He takes only as long as he needs to scatter the limbs around. Tomorrow the sun will rise, will hopefully burn it all away, and it will be as if William never existed. Washington walks away completely untouched by regret.

He returns to the manor they have been staying at, and finds Sally beside a fire, embroidering. She screams when she sees William’s head in Washington’s hands. 

“You may go now,” he says, gesturing with his sword to the door. “Make whatever fate you want for yourself, or you can try to punish me for him. Only leave all that you have gotten from him. I am taking it now as wages unpaid.” 

Sally, rooted to the floor, calls him a villain, calls him filth, and trash. 

“Your choice, madam,” Washington says, interrupting her. “Is to speak again or leave with your head on your shoulders.” 

She stares at him for only a moment more before she decides. She leaves without saying another word. Washington tosses William’s head into the fire, he sits, watching it burn with his sword across his lap. Again a weight on Washington’s shoulders is lifted, but this time there is none of the exhilaration he felt all those years ago in leaving his home behind. It seems a fair exchange for the lesson he has learned.

The next day Washington collects all of the clothes and finery William had collected, and takes them to sell in London. With the gold that puts in his hands, he buys the finest suit of clothing he can, and every necessary accessory. Years of watching William lets him dictate every detail to the tailor, and when the clothes are finished they are perfect. People bow to Washington as he passes when he wears them for the first time. It’s almost enough to make him smile, but not quite. 

He learns to dance, learns to charm, learns to utterly convince others of his status. He introduces himself into London society and sups exclusively on vain, young men. He draws them close and watches them carefully for cruelty. They hardly ever let him down. 

In just a few years, Washington finds that he can stand a bright sun for almost a full day and so in 1511 he goes to war once more. Almost a hundred years after his first battle, he fights again. This time he is not only a soldier, but a leader. There are men that must take his orders, men that must rally to his colors. But still he kills, and still he spends the night after it with a young man. Washington relishes in the chance to repeat the pleasures, and avoid the same mistakes.

The boy he chooses that first night, Joseph Reed, is a young man from a good family, better than any of the boys Washington had in his youth. He has large eyes, fair hair, a perfectly straight nose and a mouth that stretches wide open to take a cock. Washington had been asked by men more powerful than him to make sure the boy did not get placed in undue danger. The boy seems to appreciate the apparent favoritism and he lingers close by the next night, waiting to be taken again. Washington cannot think of a reason not to oblige him. 

Reed treats Washington more like a king than a lover. He defers easily to Washington’s moods, demands that anyone speaking to Washington show the proper respect. He revels more in displays of Washington’s power than he does his tenderness. He is easily cowed by Washington’s temper, and he turns willingly into Washington’s hand. 

It is enough. It is more than Washington had before. In time he decides to show Reed what he can do. 

Reed says, “Oh sir,” with equal parts awe and fear in his voice. But he does not run away, does not make Washington kill him. He says, reverently, “I knew that you were very great, but I had no idea. No idea at all.” 

That night Washington tucks Reed’s head under his chin and contemplates whether or not he is capable of keeping him, of making Reed like himself. Whether or not he ought to does not honestly cross his mind. 

His only experience with the process of turning is having had the process done on himself, and having been in the room when it was done on Sally. If there is advice or guidance to be had it is not within Washington’s reach. He senses, at times, that there must be others like him, but they always seem to move in circles around that refuse to overlap. 

But Reed begs, and Washington cannot stop contemplating what would happen if Reed were to one day catch a fever and die. He does not know how long it might take to find another so willing to subjugate himself to Washington’s will. They go away and Washington anxiously makes the attempt. It is a miserable affair, and he convinces himself several times that it would be a mercy to kill Reed, but the boy survives. He rises from the bed pale and hungry and needing Washington to help him with every little thing. It’s a fine time in Washington’s life.

Until Reed brings a girl into their bedroom and seems to think that Washington will be pleased with her yellow hair, her fresh milk skin. 

Washington puts the girl under his power, makes her faint and catches her as she falls. He looks up at Reed, furious. 

“You will take her to her father’s house, now.” 

Reed gapes at him. “Sir, I-”

Washington silences him with a glare. “If you want to hunt women you may choose from mothers who are an evil to their children and old women waiting for death as your only potential victims.” For a moment it looks as if Reed will dare to argue with his order. Washington brings himself to his full height, looks down at Reed with his hand upon the hilt of his sword. He asks, “Is that understood?” 

Reed eventually nods, “Yes.” When Washington’s hand does not lift from his sword, he swallows. “Yes, sire,” he says, emphasizing the title. 

He does not obey Washington out of love, but respect, fear. He takes the girl to her father’s house under Washington's watchful eye, and takes instead an ordinary traveler they find upon the road. 

At the end of the night Washington lifts a hand to cup Reed’s cheek, a gesture of absolution, and sees a flash something hard. It is soon after covered over with the same perfect submission Washington has come to expect, and whatever resentment Reed has does not prevent him from sighing under Washington moments later. They assume their same roles and find their pleasure in each other just as easily as before. Washington does not let himself regret it. Obedience and companionship are no small treasures. It will be enough. And if there comes a time when it is not, Washington will find another.

**Author's Note:**

> Title of the series is from "Fresh Blood" by Eels. Find me on [tumblr ](http://fickleobsessions.tumblr.com) where there's an ever lengthening [vampire tag.](http://fickleobsessions.tumblr.com/tagged/the-vampire-harem-sensation-that%27s-sweeping-the-nation)


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